We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

The Democrats may be making as many unforced errors and contributing more than their share to the chaos, but "The Democrats" is a diffuse target, while "President Trump" is a magnetic one. I don't know that he can stop his part of those, as they are deeply bound in with the approach that is working in other ways. They may just be a package deal.

What is certain is that many of his supporters will assure us that none of this is his fault, it's all what other people are doing. We just don't understand, you see.

Ok, I'll bite. That has to be the most overwrought analysis I've read yet this year.

Not only that, they’ve demonstrated that they’ll crawl over broken glass to vote against Trump, his allies, and his sycophants. This behaviour has played out in every special election outside a deep red GOP seat since 2017.

And what has it netted the Democrats? They've won 2 special elections in red territory, a House Seat in PA with a candidate who ran about as far from Socialist (and even mainstream Democrat) as possible and the Senate seat in AL where the candidate was a fatally flawed choice of neither Trump nor the GOPe. Neither election supports the author's contention that being energized by Trump is causing Democrats to win elections. The best counter point is the recent special election in OH where the Democrat turnout was equal to 90% of Hillary's total in 2016 but they still got beat by a lackluster 40% turnout of Republicans.

For Republicans planning for a political future beyond this election season, the ‘Trump effect’ with women, educated voters, millennials, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and first-generation American citizens is a demographic catastrophe in the making.

Black unemployment at historic lows. Hispanics - more voted GOP in 2016 than expected per recent revelations about Google. Millennials - #walkaway from the Democrats. More white women voted for Trump than Hillary. If Trump is making a demographic catastrophe, he's doing it wrong.

AVI, some of it really isn't Trump's fault. E.g., while Trump's impossible promises about replacing Obamacare with Trump Magical Flying Pony Care contributed to the problem, still the non-Trump Republicans did not do a convincing job on following through on their campaigning to get rid of Obamacare, and judging from the despearte maneuvering when passing Obamacare and from the Congressional election immediately afterwards, that issue alone is enough to create a serious problem at the polling booth.

I don't really understand mainstream political positions and image management, though. To some extent this indifference to being taken seriously been going on for my entire life, but it seems as though in the last decade or two there has been a tendency for powerful political people and entities (not just politicians, but media and academic and sometimes religious groups) to act almost completely indifferent to their credibility loss. I can see spending credibility (credible competence, integrity, assumption of good faith and good will, or whatever) for compelling cynical reasons, but these days they often seem to do it for laziness and incompetence or just inexplicable motives. Whether or not they have a particular quote in mind, most people seem to be familiar with a concept like "sincerity is the most important thing, once you can fake it you've got it made." So how did cynical opportunistic people forget how to fake it?

I don't know how the coming election will turn out, though. Non-presidential election years in the US can be heavily influenced by turnout, and that's not easy to anticipate accurately even in ordinary polling conditions. And these don't seem to be ordinary polling conditions: Trump "support" (which seems to have such a sizable component of anti-anti-Trump that I resort to scare quotes) is likely to be unusually badly distorted by "shy Tory" polling failures, and might also turn out to be heavily influenced by freaking out about triggers which aren't closely analogous to most previous elections. (E.g., obvious triggers like officially protected rioting, various really damaging revelations about the FBI, and people being fired and blacklisted for things many many ordinary voters consider to be mainstream; or less obvious triggers, e.g., perhaps reacting more strongly than we expect to the Mother of Parliaments kabukiing Brexit into oblivion while the EU slides into an even less attractive state, or to prepubescent children being medicated into transgender sterility.)

Conversely, some things about Trump's behavior might affect voters negatively more than people appreciate. It doesn't rise that high on the usual list of criticisms, but to me, Tweeting instead of using the power of your office or at least speechifying about a missing power of your office --- more power to fire Civil Service employees, e.g. --- is a very very bad look for any powerful politician, and especially for the President. I wonder whether it might be undermining him and his coalition more than most people --- opponents, supporters, "supporters", interested outsiders, whoever --- realize.

Two years ago, I didn't predict that Trump would win the Presidential election, but I did remark to my father just before the election that Clinton wasn't a safe bet, either. "Clinton is a really weak candidate." In this non-Presidential election as well, my guesstimate for the relative strength of the Republicans is somewhat stronger than that, more like even odds, for similar reasons: failing to see through the fog of poliing difficulties, I resort to the dead-reckoning estimate that the non-Republicans have been giving as good as they get in the struggle to lose the election...

@ Christopher B, @ William Newman. Essentially agree with both of you. I hope I was clear that this is not all, or even mostly Trump's fault. If you keep reading, however, you will see that B48 provides his usual evidence for my point. The merest breath of criticism means we are elites who just hate him, and don't understand as well as they do. He's not the only one.

I very much hope that the polls for Republicans in general are as wrong as they were for Trump in specific in 2016. But I have no reason to think so.

C'mon, Bird Dog, be fair! We get it: You Ivies HATE Trump! Why, being forom Queens, he likely doesn't even know what that third fork at a dinner setting is used for!

Just because all you Boyz down at the local Ivy Club actually believe the tripe churned out by NeverTrumper Rick Wilson, there is no need to inflict the same upon your good and far more erudite readers here, without warning!!

Tim Ball is a geographer, not a climate scientist, nor has he published original scientific studies of climate. He even denies that CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. In any case, the satellite record largely conforms to the surface record.

Of course he denies a "science" rife with fraud and conflicts of interest that even as an original premise was flawed. Or are you back on your noise about how, in effect, AGW is the only science where the strict rules of science are discarded in favor of subjective opinion? Because there is no correlation between your original premise and the current state of the art.

We've been through this. You expect AGW to uniquely occupy the position of a foregone conclusion based on a theory that has zero actual proof.

The onus is therefore not on Ball and he stands to none of your implied charges.

I correctly observed that urban heat islands corrupt what has become pro-hysteria AGW data, Climatebot, and I proffered evidence that such data was indeed therefore suspect. This is not in dispute.

Nor is it disputed that AGW has been a "science" rife with fraud and conflicts of interest and even whose original principle, as you constantly refer to it, is without pertinence. As you abuse it, that principle now somehow says mankind's specific 4% contribution to a trace gas constituting .04% of the atmosphere somehow induces a climatic negative feedback system into magical instability to catastrophically overshoot its natural parameters, and that it does so within or against a system all but wholly dominated by another factor, that being water vapor.

It cannot. It has not. And that's before we get into solar effects, the Sun being the system's only variable heat source.

All of the above is true. That science, so to put it, is settled. This however leads to a diverse set of problems compounded by AGW hysteria's intellectual dishonesty.

QUOTE:

He's denied that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, contrary to basic physics.

The anti-AGW hysteria science, Climatebot, convincingly asserts that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas in its nearly nonexistent dilute concentrations in Earth's atmosphere.

The onus to show otherwise is indeed on the AGW hysteric, not on Ball or myself. Or any bystander, organ-grinder, math teacher, or NASA scientist.

QUOTE:

No. Climate science is an empirical science, and overlaps significantly with other fields, such as the physics of heat.

Of course it does. What's unscientific is taking any theory and applying it to a system it doesn't apply to, mangling the data, drenching it in special interest and periodic fraud, attempting to globally monetize it, denying obvious facts about the real science, and politicizing its religious ideology.

What's unscientific is you laughably asserting a few year record and calling it ... whatever it was you called it, because it's not in the least supporting evidence for this "science" you seem to think you represent. Nobody would abuse science like that.

QUOTE:

YOU put the onus on Ball, when you cited him.

That's interesting logic, Climatebot. AGW hysterics are obviously obliged to provide reliable data demonstrating AGW which given the magnitude of the field, has yet to occur. What has occurred - as your goofy little chartlet alluded - is that they'll stoop to any parsing of that data in order to further this abuse of science. Sometimes they'll even manipulate the data.

QUOTE:

...you ignored our response:

Hardly. It's plainly obvious you don't argue in good faith and it should be plainly obvious realists don't dance in circular motions with climatebots.

QUOTE:

1) You expressed concern about the urban heat effect, so we cited a paper on the urban heat effect. What did you find unconvincing about Wickham et al?

Asked and answered. What's not answered is my asking how you would make a strictly unscientific blunder in expecting a science to stand when it has no defense against wrongly applying its own data. In other words, in your misapplied original principle there is no means whatsoever to separate out 4% of a claimed theoretical phenomenon, make a claim with it not supported by evidence, and discard the other 96%.

QUOTE:

2) The satellite record largely conforms to the surface record, undermining the claim that the surface record is not accurate.

Also circular. Do I really have to roll out the comprehensive data, Falsebot?

Now watch Zbot argue: I correctly observed that urban heat islands corrupt what has become pro-hysteria AGW data

The urban heat island effect is real, and subject to study like other empirical measures. We responded by making two points:

1) Wickham et al. studied the effect of urban heat islands on the global temperature record. You didn't bother to respond substantively, and we can't force you to read the study, but what they did was take urban temperature stations out of the record, and ascertain the trend for non-urban stations only. They found that there was no substantial difference in the global trend.

2) An independent data-source not subject to the urban heat island effect, the satellite record, supports the same trend.

Actually, the human contribution has resulted in a 40% increase in atmospheric CO2, from about 285 ppm to 400 ppm.

Now watch Zbot argue: to a trace gas constituting .04% of the atmosphere

Monatomic and homonuclear diatomic molecules are virtually unaffected by infrared energy; consequently, nitrogen, oxygen and argon are not greenhouse gases, so can be ignored. Greenhouse gases, those that absorb and emit infrared radiation, include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone, each with its own thermal footprint. Carbon dioxide constitutes about 20-25% of the greenhouse effect.

Now watch Zbot argue: the Sun being the system's only variable heat source.

The sun's radiation has been nearly flat for the last several decades while the Earth has warmed, so that can't explain the current warming trend.

Now watch Zbot argue: CO2 is not a greenhouse gas in its nearly nonexistent dilute concentrations in Earth's atmosphere.

That is incorrect. Without the greenhouse effect, the Earth would be frozen. This can be determined by calculating the graybody temperature of the Earth.

Zbot: 1) Wickham et al. studied the effect of urban heat islands on the global temperature record. You didn't bother to respond substantively, and we can't force you to read the study, but what they did was take urban temperature stations out of the record, and ascertain the trend for non-urban stations only. They found that there was no substantial difference in the global trend.

2) An independent data-source not subject to the urban heat island effect, the satellite record, supports the same trend.

Whether robotic assertions of facts not in evidence can produce studies is irrelevant unless they produce not a trend but an absolute factor. Obviously, good Data X trends with bad Data Y but it does not confirm bad Data Y nor does it confirm a phenomenon. An absolute correlation between human input and climate remains missing. Of course heat-offset surface data may trend with satellite data. It's just not valid data.

Mention of this missing absolute factor is characteristically also missing from robotic denials of straight-forward, reliable science and us humans note that you didn't bother to respond substantively or intellectually honestly to our appeals concerning it.

QUOTE:

Zbot: Actually, the human contribution has resulted in a 40% increase in atmospheric CO2, from about 285 ppm to 400 ppm.

Wrong. Further, the Achilles Heel of these pedantic appeals to facts not in evidence is this: CO2 lags temperature and it has for hundreds of thousands of years. Not only can you not tie non-existent warming to CO2, you cannot tie anything to it. For example, Petit, Raynaud, and Lorius in 2007 warned:

QUOTE:

“…our [East Antarctica, Dome C] ice core shows no indication that greenhouse gases have played a key role in such a coupling [with radiative forcing]”

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/317/5839/793.full

in 2014 Mearns then noted:

QUOTE:

In their seminal paper on the Vostok Ice Core, Petit et al (1999) [1] note that CO2 lags temperature during the onset of glaciations by several thousand years but offer no explanation. They also observe that CH4 and CO2 are not perfectly aligned with each other but offer no explanation. The significance of these observations are (sic) therefore ignored. At the onset of glaciations temperature drops to glacial values before CO2 begins to fall suggesting that CO2 has little influence on temperature modulation at these times.

This familiar lag was noted throughout the corresponding literature.

QUOTE:

Zbot: [pedantry snipped as non-responsive] Greenhouse gases, those that absorb and emit infrared radiation, include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone, each with its own thermal footprint. Carbon dioxide constitutes about 20-25% of the greenhouse effect.

You keep saying that.

QUOTE:

Zbot: The sun's radiation has been nearly flat for the last several decades while the Earth has warmed, so that can't explain the current warming trend.

You keep saying that. The Earth has not warmed and you haven't addressed why you use such laughably faulty data.

(Sources specifically chosen to include CO2 and a broad set of factors.) Still no AGW.

QUOTE:

Zbot: Without the greenhouse effect, the Earth would be frozen. This can be determined by calculating the graybody temperature of the Earth.

Without heat the Earth would be frozen, Climatebot. You haven't so much as identified why its temperature is what it is, much less been scientifically responsive to how or why. It's like an agenda that doesn't like interference (but loves detached pronouncements).

Incidentally, and while I have no delusions on meaning vis a vis climatebots, I don't actually deny the possibility of AGW - I just don't see it and I don't think any reasonable mind does. I deny hysteria and the conflicted interests that drive its industry, another phenomenon you remain predictably silent on.

That's half a dozen problems with your theory and approach - and counting - that you will not address...

As greenhouse warming is only one factor among many affecting climate, we would not expect a perfect correlation. (The absolute correlation is the absolute value of the correlation coefficient, so not sure why you used that term.)

Now watch Zbot argue: Of course heat-offset surface data may trend with satellite data. It's just not valid data.

Of course it's valid data. What are your reasons for saying otherwise?

Zachriel: Actually, the human contribution has resulted in a 40% increase in atmospheric CO2, from about 285 ppm to 400 ppm.

Now watch Zbot argue: CO2 lags temperature and it has for hundreds of thousands of years.

That is correct. Overall, CO2 and global temperature closely track. However, there can be a lag. That's because CO2 is both cause and effect, a feedback mechanism. As the Earth warms, the oceans release CO2, which causes further warming. As the Earth cools, the oceans absorb CO2, which causes further cooling. This positive feedback helps account for shifts between glacial and interglacial periods, as orbital variations are insufficient by themselves.

Now watch Zbot argue: “…our [East Antarctica, Dome C] ice core shows no indication that greenhouse gases have played a key role in such a coupling [with radiative forcing]”

You really should avoid quote-mining. At least read the study first before citing it. They also say "The amplitude of the radiative greenhouse forcing, however, is very important in the 100-ky band (~2.5 W/m2 comparable to the additional greenhouse forcing due to anthropogenic activities)."

Now watch Zbot argue: You keep saying that.

Because it's true. See Schmidt et al., Attribution of the present‐day total greenhouse effect, Journal of Geophysical Research 2010.

Quite so. But even with the sun's energy, the Earth’s average temperature without the greenhouse effect would be a chilly ≈-18°C rather than the balmy ≈+15°C that it is. You can determine this by calculating the Earth's graybody temperature.

Now watch Zbot argue: You haven't so much as identified why its temperature is what it is

The Earth's surface temperature is largely determined by insolation, albedo, and the greenhouse effect.

Owing to what appears to be bias such an argument as yours fails on many points: Continually selectively mining data; overstating the CO2 problem and/or attributing phenomena not in evidence; failing to isolate the human contribution; failing to include water vapor, cements, et al or conflating all purported forcing with CO2; failing to include the geothermal or volcanic contributions which overwhelm others; failing to address carbon-sinking and natural feedback and equilibrium; failing to address or include a handful of fundamental phenomena essential to the science; ignoring corrupted data, scandal, political influence, carbon monetization, etc.; failing to address the scientific requirement to strictly isolate purported AGW inflows from all inflows per net outflow before demanding a conclusion, and failing to distinguish theory from the complex real evidence; conflating that evidence with scientific methodology itself - the "science is settled" canard - thereby twice violating fundamental tenets of rigorous science; and of course the intellectual problems: the unsupported flat assertions, the pedantry, and the appeals to semantics, all of which is before we get to the deflection, denial, and bad faith arguing, at which point I conclude that the circularity only builds such that any remaining pro-AGW argument simply cannot stand to reason.

That doesn't mean that AGW - or the artificial phenomena alleged that create it - is not feasible, casually apparent, tacitly sensible or real, just that is not supported by the weight of evidence ... while its zealots actually tend to greatly diminish arguments in favor of it.

It does however mean that per the above, arguing it as a climatebot does in some comment section creates two overall problems and not one. The first derives from the listed failures but the second from the sheer incompleteness that precedes the climatebot argument: Since the climatebot absolutely bears the onus of demonstrating what reams of information have not, back and forth in places like this is futile before it begins, and that confirms the bias and bad faith of a pro-AGW climatebot sniper. I'd happily cede if that point were regarded: A climatebot cannot circumscribe a convincing body of evidence the field itself has yet to assemble ... and that's just not much of a foundation for a climatebot to stand on.

In which case any of this it hardly rises to the level of a convincing, robust, or settled science. As you keep showing, it's a nice theory. Enjoy.

These and other aspects of climate change have been studied in detail and the results are found in published peer reviewed journals.

Now watch Zbot argue: {balance}

Extensive handwaving.

--

You did make some specific points above. We responded, but you ignored those responses.

Let's start with three different data-sets; surface, satellite, and ocean. These were collected by different scientists, using entirely different methods. All of these support that the Earth is warming. Do you agree? If not, why do all three data-sets show the same warming trend?

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. From first principles, CO2 directly adds about 1°C to surface warming per doubling. As the Earth's surface warms, the water vapor content of the atmosphere increases. This relationship is defined as climate sensitivity. From first principles, climate sensitivity is about 3°C per doubling of CO2. Various empirical measures put climate sensitivity at 2-4°C per doubling of CO2. Do you agree? If not, why not?

Intentionalism and intellectually dishonest in the extreme; another circular assertion; intentionalism and intellectually dishonest in the extreme; profoundly intellectually dishonest vis a vis multiple, direct challenges to the theory = settled science mythology and lie; circular; asked and answered; and again posited and addressed.

You hide behind "handwaving" when I'm quite specific and pertinent, which reinforces the common view that you're a troll. After a point nobody owes a troll any more specificity or time.

I have no onus and you have neither an argument or the intellectual honesty to stop making the same unforced errors and, well, handwaving back to the usual transparent diversions.

Which means we're done. Actually we were done long before but out of some odd morbid curiosity, I keep offering.

You can always recognize handwaving type arguments because they are detached from the discussion.

• "The Earth is round." "Is not!"
• "Matter is made up of particles." "Circular reasoning."
• "The sky is blue." "Intentionalism and intellectually dishonest in the extreme."

In any case, in order to redirect the discussion back to the topic, we stated three data-sets along with specific questions about those data-sets; the evidence concerning CO2 from physics; and the evidence of stratospheric cooling.

Another area of evidence is the temperature of the lower stratosphere. If the current warming is due to increased solar heating, then the entire atmosphere should warm. However, if current warming is due to an increase in the greenhouse effect, then the surface and lower atmosphere should warm, but the stratosphere should cool. And that is what we observe.

Columbia Gas said they were upgrading their distribution system. It really does look like there was some kind of severe over-pressure spike in the distribution mains. Couple this with an antiquated system (apparently there have been consumer complaints about this for years) and it's not hard to see how a corroded distribution line next to a home could soon fill its basement up, since gas goes to the low places. I saw last night there were at least 90 fires. Gas Regulators are just spring-loaded diaphragms controlling a valve, and usually gas supply pressure downstream is just a few ounces per square inch (i.e. much less than 1 psi). I don't think a pressure spike would cause one to fail, but I guess you never know, especially if it had been in service for a long time.

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